A new method for short-duration transient detection in radio images: searching for transient sources in MeerKAT data of NGC 5068

Transient surveys are a vital tool in exploring the dynamic universe, with radio transients acting as beacons for explosive and highly energetic astrophysical phenomena. However, performing commensal transient surveys using radio imaging can require a significant amount of computing power, data storage and time. With the instrumentation available to us, and with new and exciting radio interferometers in development, it is essential that we develop efficient methods to probe the radio transient sky. In this paper, we present results from an commensal short duration transient survey, on time-scales of 8 seconds, 128 seconds and 1 hour, using data from the MeerKAT radio telescope. The dataset used was obtained as part of a galaxy observing campaign, and we focus on the field of NGC 5068. We present a quick, wide-field imaging strategy to enable fast imaging of large datasets, and develop methods to efficiently filter detected transient candidates. No transient candidates were identified on the time-scales of 8 seconds, 128 seconds and 1 hour, leading to competitive limits on the transient surface densities of 6.7 × 10⁻⁵, 1.1 × 10⁻³, and 3.2 × 10⁻² deg⁻¹ at sensitivities of 56.4 mJy, 19.2 mJy, and 3.9 mJy for the respective time-scales. We find one possible candidate that could be associated with a stellar flare, that was rejected due to strict image quality control. Further short time-scale radio observations of this candidate could give definite results to its origin.